u/C0nditionOakland

My U12 is a goalkeeper that has patiently been awaiting this year when he can fully specialize. For a little bit of background, he's always wanted to be a goalie, and on his "professional rec" team his coach allowed him to do it because no one else wanted and he was good.

When he started traditional club soccer last year, they assessed him largely based on his field skills, which were well behind the better players and he was placed on the bottom team.

We were good with this because he did want to improve his ball skills, his soccer fundamentals, etc. He actually made big improvements and by the end of the season was scoring with regularity when playing his half at striker. However, when he played in goal, he wasn't getting challenged by the opponents at that level, OR he was allowing goals when the bottom-team level defense was making fantastic mistakes and hanging him out to dry, which would also bum him out.

Talking to his coach at the end of the season, he told me that my son was a B-Team, maybe even borderline A-Team level keeper, but his field play was firmly in the C team range. He recommended that if he WANTS to keep playing in the field, he's probably going to get placed right back on the same team for next year, but if he is interested in specializing, he will likely get placed higher. He did caution that sometimes keepers try out as a fulltime goalie, but then start wanting to mix in field time, half in goal half on the field etc, and some coaches will shoot down that request if their field player isn't commensurate with the level of team they're on.

He had his first night of tryouts last night and in the keeper specific portion where the GK coaches assess those attributes, he did very well. They provided their feedback when it came to integrate into the 7 v 7 games, he was placed on the A team tryout group, but i think the level of the kids (pre ECNL hopeful) was just so far beyond what he's accustomed to, and they moved him down to the B team field and he settled in and did great.

So my question -- for keeper parents, when did your child specialize? When you specialized, was it with the understanding that like a pitcher giving up playing in the field or hitting and focusing only on pitching, that youre putting all your eggs in that keeper basket? If you were in a scenario like ours, would you take the higher placement in service of the keeper ambition, or take the lower placement to allow for flexibility and option to play in the field as needed\desired?

I love Blitz, i'm an average-ish player that generally wins every 4 or 5 rounds of Blitz under normal circumstances. I don't like when it's full of bots and easy to win, but lately it feels very hard to win. I think part of it is the hammer and players using it for quick escapes\mobility, but overall I feel like I'm getting slaughtered in 1 v 1 situations with far more regularity than I'm accustomed.

One of my favorite shows ever, a lot of the characters are either dramatized depictions of real people or just representations of personas or a mix of real people.

There are a number of storylines that involve Italian organized crime. One of which has Charles "Darby" Sabini, who was a real figure in the London underworld in the early 20th century.

More interesting to me though is Adrien Brody as Luca Changretta, a fictional character who originates in the NY mafia. He comes to the show as the season 4 antagonist, looking to execute a vendetta against the Shelby family for the murder of his father.

Brody does an incredible job, and the character is chilling and captivating.

I wonder who you all that have seen the show would say the writers drew inspiration from for this character, or who you see the most similarity in terms of a real person in 1920s NY organized crime.

Thanks!

We got an email from our club over the weekend discussing some upcoming pre-tryout sessions where kids will be training with their new age groups, the idea being seeing how those mixes gel, where there is positional overlap and at which level, etc.

One of the things that jumped out to me that I don't believe to be particularly true is that this change is going to "eliminate" trapped teams.

In our area, and I think in a lot of affluent suburbs, this isn't going to eliminate the "trapped" scenario, it's just going to shift it to a different group of kids. My son is a May birthday, he's turning 13 in a couple of weeks and finishing sixth grade. The school year formula assumes he's in seventh grade, but we started him in kindergarten at 6 instead of 5 on our pediatrician's advice and our own gut feeling because he was very small and immature for his age at that time. My wife stays home with the kids, so it didn't present a hardship to us and just made the most sense for him to wait a year. There are 3-4 other kids on our current team that are the same: kids whose birthday and age don't align with the assumed school year.

So when he's in 8th grade, he will now be on a team with a majority of ninth graders who won't play in the spring due to high school soccer. I'm concerned that he's not going to have anywhere to play in 8th or 12th grade if clubs are truly eliminating "trapped" teams.

Have you guys gotten any guidance on this? In my mind, in our area, there's going to be enough impacted kids that they're going to have to find some way to accomodate them, even if there are fewer trapped teams overall, but what I don't know is whether USYS is applying any governance to the process.

We are still a year out from this being reality, but trying to wrap my head around what we will be up against!

First year of middle school soccer. All sixth graders are on JV, as well as half the seventh graders. The other half of the seventh graders are eligible to play JV games, though there are time restrictions if games are in the same day.

Our JV team is very strong and hasn't had to do that. Our coach believes JV is a development team where playing time is relatively equal and should be a bridge to the more competitive varsity team, the next two years.

We had one loss all year, and it was to the other "powerhouse" middle school. Both teams are primarily comprised of high level club players, and several kids at the other school are club teammates of our players. The difference is that this school, which was undefeated in the regular season, "stacked" their JV team with varsity seventh graders against every team that could conceivably beat them, even the teams like ours that don't do this as a matter of principle. Our coach has said it's unfair to the kids that have contributed to such a strong year, to say that now that there's a trophy on the line you're on the bench. I tend to agree with him.

We are now set to face this team again in the county JV championship.

What is the protocol where you play, for those of you playing HS or MS soccer with defined varsity and jv teams? Playing JV kids up is totally fine in my mind, but similar to club, I don't think kids should ever play down as a way to get wins.

The crazy thing is that this school's JV team, like ours, is already primarily ECNL, RL, and NPL players. They don't NEED to throw 5 ECNL kids that are a year older and bigger\faster than our mostly sixth grade team. They would have a great chance at winning a fair and even game against us with only their true JV roster. Just seems like a cheesy move, no?

So, this is our first year at our current club, playing on their top tier, badged team. We left our previous club where we played for a second tier badge (NPL). It was a difficult decision since my son had been there for a number of years and knew a lot of the kids and coaches, and they didn't want to see him leave, but we felt like he had hit a wall in terms of his progress, being one of the better players on his team and guesting\training on the next team up (ECNL RL) but without a firm commitment to get him to that level full-time, despite lots of wishy-washy statements.

After tryouts last spring, when he got an offer from our old club that would see him on the same NPL team again, we decided to take a better offer. We had talked to the DOC and the team's coach for the new club to get an idea of what they thought of my son and what his role would be -- sometimes a jump up isn't best if it means sitting on the bench, but they assured us that wouldn't be the case.

Fast forward, we are now at the end of that first year. We've been happy with how it's gone. My son loves the kids, his coach, and has never regretted the decision.

It's been a tough year in terms of league competition. The club told us to expect that, because this was their first year in the league and we would be in a tough division against more established teams. They urged us to look not at wins\losses as the measure of success and from that perspective, it's impossible to deny that every single kid on the team has made a huge improvement both individually and as a team.

That all said, we enjoyed our year and had full intention to return for next year.

Because of this, we were caught off guard when we had a end of season parent meeting and the club essentially said that while happy with the development overall, they want to be more competitive next year and essentially, they were going to clear the decks at tryouts and everyone -- internal and external, would be looked at fresh.

On one hand, I understand this to a degree -- but on another, to throw out the familiarity the have with the kids, beyond just their level of ability, but things like coachability, work ethic, team chemistry, etc. Things that don't necessarily get captured in a 3 night tryout.

We are now pretty concerned. It was a jump up for my son and he did go from being one of the "core" players on his old team to more middle of the pack. He started some games, didn't start others, but generally got a good amount of playing time and did well. Reading between the lines, it feels like they're saying the "top" of our roster is pretty safe, but everyone else is going to come down to whether or not they find a better option. At our old club, even at the ECNL level, this wasn't something that happened. If you earned a spot on a team, unless it was just completely not working (not the case for anyone on our team), it was generally pretty safe. Tryouts were filling in holes for kids that left.

When we talked to the club before accepting our offer last year, we said we were wanting a club to grow with long term. They expressed that's what they want from their players. Now it feels like we got used for a one night stand and they're looking for someone else to marry. If we don't get a spot, we'll still get an offer for our next team down, but that team is below the level of our old club\NPL team -- which is a hard team to crack beccause it's a big, popular club and when we left, there was someone eager to take the spot, so we would depend on another spot opening in tryouts.

Even if my son does get a spot, I'm concerned that the entire makeup could be different. I feel a little bit like we got baited\switched.

For those of you playing at this level -- is this a common thing, is anyone else going through something similar? I'm very stressed!